NATO in Afghanistan

Introduction

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, commonly known as NATO, is a mutual defense alliance founded on April 4, 1949. The September 11, 2001, attacks against the United States marked an additional turning point for the alliance. Although originally conceived as a mechanism for the United States to assist its allies if they were attacked, the September 11 attacks prompted NATO to declare the attacks by the al Qaeda/Taliban regime on the United States as an attack on all NATO members. As a result, NATO-led forces, exceeding 40,000 by 2008, have been active in counterinsurgency, humanitarian, and reconstruction efforts across Afghanistan. The current position of Afghanistan can be described as peaceful where the President Obama have declared July 2011 as the date to start drawdown of U.S. troops. At the 2010 NATO summit in Portugal it was decided that 2014 would be the year military operations in the country would end. Thus, getting out of Afghanistan will be riddled with multiple complications, as was winning the initial war there (Moore, 2007).

The NATO and U.S policy inventions of Afghanistan were done through ISAF. The ISAF's role was later taken over by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) under the leadership of the United States and UK. Operation Enduring Freedom resulted in the Taliban being removed from power and the 2004 election of Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan's first direct elections. The initiative continued throughout the remainder of the Bush administration and into the presidency of Barack Obama, and decimated the Afghan economy. As a result, many farmers reverted to growing poppies for the production of opium. As early as 2001, a number of prominent Afghans met under with the guidance of the UN to address opium production. At that time, the UK was designated the lead in assisting the Afghan government with counter-narcotics initiatives. After Karzai's election in 2004, Afghanistan saw opium production hit record levels. While the government has consistently had a policy of eradicating poppy cultivation, this strategy has been compromised by corrupt government officials (nato.usmission.gov).

Afghanistan history

The British-US relationship over Afghanistan developed very late in the history of that ancient country, but in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., it assumed immediate and critical importance. From the seventh to the eighteenth century, a succession of Muslim dynasties gained control, by the tenth century eliminating the last of the non-Muslim dynasties ruling from Kabul. Mohammad Shah of Persia besieged Herat in November 1837, Britain sought to counter Russian influence by establishing alliances with the separate rulers of Herat, Kabul, and Kandahar. However, the failure of the British mission to Kabul sparked the first Anglo-Afghan War, with the British Army marching into Kandahar in April 1839 (Moore, 2007).

For two decades, Afghanistan faced civil war, regal usurpation, and regicide, a second phase of modernization under Nader Khan, which saw a flourishing of educational and cultural initiatives, and rigorous Afghan neutrality through World War II. With the Taliban's second refusal to extradite bin ...